Roughly one in seven Americans has some German ancestry,1 though a far smaller group will have the German line where it would have to be to show up for YDNA testing: remember that YDNA is the kind of DNA that only men have and that’s passed down from father to son to son (and so on) largely unchanged througyh the generations.2 So the German line would have to be their father’s father’s father’s line.

In this reader’s case, it was that line: his great grandfather came to the United States in 1880 from Germany, and the YDNA line comes down through his grandfather and father to him.

So… why doesn’t he have any YDNA matches closer than a genetic distance of 2 in a YDNA-37 test? Is it reasonable to suspect, as this reader does, that his youthful great grandmother was fooling around on his elderly great grandfather (“I suspect a Drummer, or salesman got close, while old (great grandpa) was out in the fields”)?

First, some terminology. The particular DNA sequences being looked at in YDNA testing are called short tandem repeats (STRs), and they’re patterns of DNA code that form sequences and where the sequences are repeated a number of times at those particular locations on the Y chromosome.3

Those particular locations are called markers: the genes or DNA sequences with known locations within a chromosome that make them useful for comparing one person’s DNA with another.4 In the case of YDNA testing, it’s the STRs — those short tandem repeats — in a number of locations.

How many of those particular locations are looked at (12, 25, 37, 67 or 111 if you’ve tested at Family Tree DNA) tells you the level of YDNA testing that was done, in short that are the markers being reviewed.

The genetic distance reported is the way the DNA testing people describe the differences, if any, between the markers reported in one person’s DNA results and those reported in a second person’s results. “A genetic distance of zero means that there are no differences in the two results and there is an exact match.”5 If the genetic distance is small enough, the two people are considered a match, meaning they share a common ancestor.

The lowest possible level, in older tests not even readily available any more, looked at only 12 markers and, at that level, in some very common populations, a perfect match basically means nothing more than yep, you and all of your matches are in fact European males.

YDNA testing at 37 markers is pretty middle of the road, and a genetic distance of two in a Y-37 test — where there isn’t a common surname between the people tested — may only be suggestive of a genetic relationship within the time frame when we might be able to find genealogical records. The more markers tested and the closer the matches, especially if they share a surname, the higher the chances that the people are related, and related within a recent time frame.

Now… here’s the catch to all of this: you can’t be matched to somebody who hasn’t tested.

That’s something we tend to forget when we look at our matches. If the population we come from isn’t doing a lot of testing, we’re not going to have a lot of matches.

And… sigh… Germans aren’t testing in anything near the numbers that other groups are.

There are a lot of reasons for this. There’s a cultural resistance to DNA testing that stems from the history of eugenics by the Nazis.6 There are strong privacy laws in place in Germany as well, though DNA tests for genealogy are perfectly legal,7 and Germany isn’t even on the list of countries to which AncestryDNA will ship a DNA test kit.8

Since this reader’s great grandfather came to the United States in 1880, it likely means that any representatives of that male line who are alive today are still in Germany. That would be, for example, the grandsons or great grandsons of this great grandfather’s brothers or male cousins.

So the bottom line is… no, it’s not reasonable to believe that the reason why the reader doesn’t have close matches is that Great Grandma was fooling around in the United States. It’s much more reasonable to think that the reason why the reader doesn’t have close YDNA matches is that other men from his family line haven’t yet tested.

Autosomal DNA testing is igniting interest in this kind of testing for genealogy around the world and may help break down some of the resistance to testing. There’s a company called LivingDNA that’s trying to break through the German resistance to DNA testing and create a database of autosomal DNA test data for Germans with what it calls its German DNA Research Project and that holds great promise. And, of course, autosomal testing now could link the reader to cousins who descend from other parts of that German family tree — from females who did come to America, for example.

But for now… the real problem with having few YDNA matches isn’t likely to be that Great Grandma was fooling around. It’s that you can’t be matched to somebody who hasn’t tested.

17 Comments

Good reminder, Judy. My dad’s YDNA doesn’t match anyone either, and we’re not German. All we can do it keep an eye on things and encourage others to be tested. It’s frustrating to see that no only do few of his more distant matches have his surname – they don’t match each other, either! We need more testers!

Same for France! There is however a petition going around among French genealogists to allow DNA tests to be sold in France to be used for genealogy purposes. FTDNA are allowed and did ship tests to my parents and I am now awaiting results, but not holding my breath since so few people have tested in France. Any way we are contributing to the pool and maybe later, it will pay of.

My goodness, he’s worried because his closest matches to his own surname group are a genetic distance of 2? 🙂 I recently got y111 results, and out of 571 y-DNA participants in the Hall group, I have absolutely ZERO matches at ANY genetic distance at ANY marker level, not even at 12 markers! Out of the entire FTDNA database, I have ZERO y37 matches! There are of course zero matches at y111 as well. Basically my only matches in the entire database are at y67, where i match 4 Powell’s and 1 Bannister at genetic distance of 5; and at genetic distance of 6, I have 5 Williams and 2 more Powell’s. I don’t really know what to make of it. I am R-M269 > R-L21.

Nope, not to his surname, which mitigates against the relationship. In your case, I’d be looking for an undocumented adoption: a Hall mother and a Powell or Williams father, with the child raised by the Halls.

Good point addressed, Judy. Finding success and meaningful clues with DNA testing is not just dependent on the database size of the test company but the size of YOUR potential cousin database, and whether they are willing (and able) to test. Walker, I feel your pain. I got started in genetic genealogy in 2009 with yDNA testing of my Hall brother to try to get a lead on our Hall line in 18th C Loudoun Co, Virginia. Only a few distant 12 marker matches, none with our surname. Luckily I was able to get our paternal uncle to test, 1 month before he passed. They were not an exact match, just 36/37 markers. (Autosomal DNA shows them to be uncle/nephew.) Still, 8 years and 111 marker upgrade later, they still only match one another, with the exception of 1 distant 105/111 match, with a different surname. I’m resigned to finding and testing male Halls who I think are on our line based on the paperwork genealogy. Fortunately, the autosomal DNA is starting to corroborate our line back 5 – 6 generations. I think the population size is there, some had large families in VA, KY, TN & MO, but these people just aren’t testing in great numbers. So, don’t be ready to give up the Hall name just yet!

Thank you Judy and Mary! I don’t have a ton of confirmed Hall autosomal matches; I need to look harder for those. I do have a great match between my dad and his Hall 2nd cousin (340cM), so I know my Hall name is good at least back to my 2nd great grandfather. Maybe I should track down a 4th or 5th cousin Hall and get them to do a y37. Hmm…

Christopher Schuetz
on July 10, 2017 at 8:25 pm

A match as close as a GD of 2! I dream of such a match. I have none at 67, 37 and even 12 markers. Also a German line. But Germans have tested for my haplogroup, and so I have moved over to haplogroup studies. Very interesting, although no family.
If I had a match with a GD of 2 at 37 markers, but a different surname, one possibility would be that the link occurred before the adoption of fixed surnames. Depending on where in Europe your ancestors came from, that could be up to a thousand years ago, or not yet.

But I do have autosomal connections to the same line – from the colonies that the German ancestors went to.
So yes, yDNA can be a problem; but at least there is an alternative – for a few generations at least.

Don Bott
on July 3, 2017 at 12:57 am

You describe my situation pretty well, thouh I do have matches at the 37 level. None with my surname. Some are clearly German, a couple may be French or English (surname Chamberlain) and a surprisingly large number are Irish. The only explanation I can offer, though it may be invalid, is that those in the U.K. Came over as part of the Queen Anne’s Migration in the early 1700s. Other possible explanations?

I also think this can be a matter of class. My son-in-law who has a very distinguished pedigree has no matches at the Y67. I think these people are very secure in who they are and wouldn’t dream of being tested. I have offered kits to several 2nd cousins but they weren’t interested. His mother, who has Ulster Irish descent, has so many atDNA matches.

Using http://factfinder.census.gov, the same source in footnote 1, I discovered 2.6% of the respondents report French ancestry,rising to 3.3% if you include French-Canadian ancestry. Not as large as German, English or Irish, but if your ancestry is French, it’s very important to you. While the barrier with Germany and other countries is popularizing the notion of genetic testing, with France it’s a bigger hurdle – the law, which seems to protect marital indiscretions, has to be changed.

The lesson for us is that no matter our ancestry, getting more people to test around the world improves the odds of getting useful information about our ancestry through DNA.

By the way, the link on footnote 1 leads to a page with the message “An error has occurred in American FactFinder”.

Congrats on this writer for outlining a critical flaw for Y-DNA testing. I only did the lowest level test back when it was a Nat Geo project, and the new company recommends I upgrade to “hone down” my results, at great expense. But I can see already that none of the hundred or so matches are anywhere near my father’s place of origin, so no point “honing it down”. Y-DNA, unless you’re lucky, is only good for population studies, not for personal ancestry research.

I disagree: YDNA can help answer a fair number of genealogical questions, including differentiating between this Jones family and that Jones family or this Smith family and that Smith family. It can help narrow down a possible surname in an unknown parentage situation. And more. It’s not limited to population studies at all. In your particular case, honing down the geographic area may not be helpful, no, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other genealogical questions the YDNA results might help with.

Hi! Interesting read this. I am from a different culture, were surnames are a relatively new invention. Patronymikon is our way of tracing our ancestors generation by generation, back to the 15th century with any luck. Getting tests done has become very popular in north of Sweden where I am from. More and more people traces their ancestry back, and contribute with their YDNA and mtDNA, and speculations about family connections among people living in the 15th-16th century has been proven right or wrong thanks to this, a benefit for all interested in genealogy in the area. A surname is nothing to go by here, people picked up any old name when surnames became more popular in the 19th century. My fathers line includes names like Burström, Ågren, Holmgren and more, all distant male cousins. So I find all this focus on surnames fascinating and a bit strange really. A lot of selfmade men most have picked up names they liked when they re-invented themselves, moving up in society or to another country or city. That is a fascinating part of a family history too.

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